Capitalism, Politics

Learning from China

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Here is an article by Aseem Shrivastava, who suggests that there is a grimmer lesson to be learnt from China than the corporate flunkies would have us believe. Turning Mumbai into Shanghai? More like turning Nandigram into Shenzen…

The Indian Predicament
SEZS: Behind the Curtain
By ASEEM SHRIVASTAVA

“Few cities anywhere have created wealth faster than Shenzhen, but the costs of its phenomenal success stare out from every corner: environmental destruction, soaring crime rates and the disillusionment and degradation of its vast force of migrant workers”

–“Chinese Success Story Chokes on Its Own Growth”

The New York Times, December 19, 2006.

Within the short span of a few decades China has become the envy of the world. Corporate managers across the globe lose sleep worrying about “the China price”. Real wages and working conditions rivaling those of industrializing, pauperizing Britain two centuries ago have enabled the country to leave far behind any global competitor who has to worry about such inconvenient matters as labor laws and environmental regulations. Thus has accelerated the inter-national race to the bottom that has generated fear since the early days of this phase of corporate globalization. The labor force in the global economy doubled overnight in the early 1990s (from 1400 to 2900 million) when China, India and the Eastern Bloc nations joined it after the fall of the Berlin Wall, under Bush I’s “New World Order.” If real wages and the share of wages in national income have fallen sharply in recent times, and if inequalities have risen dramatically at the same time, the answer to the riddle lies in this quiet accretion, cashed in on by China-based corporations who have set the pace. The logic of capital has inveigled the entire world into a race of totalitarianisms–which inevitably enrich the few and pauperize the many in

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Law

Women, Muslims & Other Backward Castes

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The staple that one grew up on, was the idea, that WE, the people of India, had through a consensus, decided to constitute ourselves into a nation – a secular, democratic, Socialist (as an after thought perhaps, once Gharibi had been hataoed) republic. One was told that the Executive, the legislature and the Judiciary were the pillars that kept a check on each other, thus ensuring that every one was kept in their place, and the pulls and pressures exerted by each on the other two were built into the state structure in order that every one stayed on the straight and narrow.

All this was however soon forgotten to be replaced by the lived experience of the machinations of an uncaring and callous executive and a by and large insensitive legislature. The only hope now was the Judiciary, the third pillar of parliamentary democracy, and one waited with baited breath for the honourable courts to deliver this nation of a billion and more from the collective mess in which the other two had placed the people of the largest democracy in the world.

Judicial activism became the proverbial straw that one clutched at and hoped for more such straws to keep a destitute nation afloat.

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Government, Metropolis

From Informal to Illegal

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The fight for city space, today, has gone far beyond the Master Plan. On the traffic signals of South Delhi, the Master Plan 2021 now rivals Paulo Coehlo in sales. Planning and the fight for urban space has, it seems, becomes everyone’s debate. On the surface, this is a fight about planning and order, about drawing the lines between formal/informal, legal/illegal, and public/private to prevent the “anarchy” that may result without planning.

Yet how do we understand “informality” and “illegality” in a city like Delhi? According to the Tejender Khanna Committee, appointed by the government and led by Delhi’s ex- Lt Governor, nearly 70% of the city lives in a state of semi-legality, mostly due to the DDA’s consistent failure to meet its own land acquisition and housing development targets over the last twenty years. Sainik Farms and the slums of Yamuna Pushta are, therefore, just as “informal” as each other, albeit in different ways. Yet the consequences of their informality are vastly different. Within the courts, the Master Plans and in public opinion, it is only the slum dwellers and the urban poor that have become “encroachers,” and the homes that they have lived in for decades “temporary” and “illegal.” In the context of poverty, it seems, informality very easily slides into illegality. Continue reading From Informal to Illegal →

Government, Images, Language

Celebrating difference in Southasia

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Choles Ritchil, an activist and a leader of the Garo people living in the Modhupur Upozila under Tangail District in Bangladesh was found dead last month. Over the last three years, he had been leading a protest against the establishment of an Eco park in the forests around his village by the department of Forest. He was allegedly tortured brutally by the officers of the local army camp before dying.

Garos are a part of a large tribal minority, along with other hill people, known as pahadis, who are part of present-day Bangladesh, along side the large minority of Hindus. Bangladesh, as we know, was formerly East Pakistan and seceded from it after India fought a war against Pakistan in 1971. Its founder leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had said in his founding speech, “From today, you are all Bengalis.” Not all Bengalis are equal. Continue reading Celebrating difference in Southasia →

Right watch

Narendra Modi and Mallika Sarabhai

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The Modi administration in Gujarat wants some more censorship, this time the programme is not even about the Gujarat riots:

Modi spent some precious time explaining to Ahluwalia that the TV project on development issues — including women’s empowerment, health, youth and human rights — was done without consulting the state even though these are state subjects.

And, so deep-rooted is Modi’s dislike for Sarabhai — because she has been at odds on various issues including the communal riots — that he is not leaving matters at that.

The BJP on Tuesday announced that it will stage a protest at the Doordarshan office here over Mallika’s project which gets two hours of airtime every day. Local producers are already up in arms against the project. [Times of India]

Here is a previous example of the price that Sarabhai has to pay fro speaking up against Modi.

Law, Right watch

Amnesty report on the fifth anniversary of the Gujarat carnage

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Here. (.pdf)

1. The direct victims of that violence and their relatives continue to face serious challenges and obstacles in securing justice;

2. An overwhelming number of the criminal cases relating to the Gujarat violence remain un-investigated and unresolved, or closed with the result that the majority of he perpetrators of the violence have gone unpunished and remain at large in the state – this is despite the reopening of 1,594 cases for reinvestigation after the Supreme Court of India (Supreme Court) order in August 2004;

3. The plight of those internally displaced from their homes as a result of the violence is continuing one. As many as 5,000 families are living in “relief colonies” without basic amenities or official recognition from the Government of Gujarat. The Government of Gujarat however continues to assert that all those displaced as a result of the violence have been rehabilitated;

4. Human rights defenders, tenaciously engaged in pursuing justice for the victims of the violence, face frequent harassment;

5. There is an ongoing practice of social and economic boycotting of Muslim communities in the state.

Right watch

The BJP CD

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“That day is not far away when we will be afraid to even call ourselves Hindu, and you will never be able to find a Sohanlal, Mohanlal, Atmaram or Radhekrishan anywhere. Wherever we look, we will only see Abbas, Naqvi, Rizvi, and Maulvi”.

Siddharth Varadarajan shares the contents of the Bhartiya Janta Party’s now-withdrawn campaign CD in the Uttar Pradesh polls.

Everyday Life, Metropolis

What if there is no water?

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I was reading Lisa Peattie’s work on Planning this morning. She says:

… every telling represents a way of seeing. We see from where we stand; and why would we look unless we care about how the story comes out?

Telling represents a way of seeing;
We see from where we stand …

Continue reading What if there is no water? →

Right watch

Goa: Communal Tinderbox Waiting To Explode?

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The demolition of a mosque which housed a madarsa also, is still fresh in the minds of Samshad Begum Anarbi.She had built the structure singlehandedly with some help from community members as well. In fact, the idea was to build a mosque and a madrasa where people could pray and young children could study Arabic. The whole structure was built on a government land, which came under the Twenty Point Programme.

On February 24, last year the Savordem panchayat issued a notice in which they stated that the structure is illegal and would be demolished within seven days. Samshad Anarbi immediately approached the directorate of Panchayats and could manage to get a stay order from it. When the locals learnt about it, they attacked the building at night and demolished the structure.

Continue reading Goa: Communal Tinderbox Waiting To Explode? →

Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Apko Goli Kisne Mari?

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[I wrote the following report in July 2002 when a group of us -including some present-day Kafila writers – worked in a riot relief camp in Vatwa, Ahmedabad. Before Gujarat, and this report, I was an unhappy student of Chemistry in Delhi University, un-sure of what i wanted to do post-graduation. I’m not saying that I chose to become a journalist specifically after the Gujarat riots; but this was the first long report I had ever written, and revealed to me the possibilities of journalism – not as a tool of communication and dissemination, but as a means to make the world intelligible to one’s self. Gujarat in 2002 did something to you that could not pin-point, but having left you knew that something profound had changed. Re-reading it (before posting), I found myself ( as a journalist) a little embarrassed by some of the conclusions I drew, some of the sentences I constructed, and some of the grammar I bridged. But I have resisted the urge to correct it beyond a spell-check.]

6th July 2002

When I arrive in Ahmendabad, 3 months have passed since the grisly horror of Febuary, but the scars are still there for all to see. All except for the State Government i.e., which continues to turn a blind eye to the plight of the victims. The people of Gujarat are a study in numbness, a numbness which hangs heavy in the air, and affects all who touch it, including myself. After a point, the sight of burnt buildings and broken localities no longer produce a feeling of outrage and horror, and instead I lapse into a mood of hollow despair. Continue reading Apko Goli Kisne Mari? →

Identities, Sex, Violence/Conflict

Cows, Women and Hindu Manhood

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Life in Modi’s Gujarat

Gujarat is calm. And is on the march. Every village of the state is a Jyotigram. Narmada water is flowing in abundance in the canals quenching the thirst of Gujaratis. “Was not Surat flooded a few months back and did not the people of Gujarat suffer?” I ask my driver. “No, was not Narendrabhai there to take care of everything,” he replies. How can anything go wrong when Narendrabhai is keeping watch!

Narendra Modi, you see, does not have a family and he works round the clock, we are informed. I find Modi smiling down at us benevolently from the digital billboards that dot Ahmedabad. There is no escaping his firm developmental smile. “The man has impressive qualities. Gujarat is bound to forge ahead under this workaholic chief minister. A citizen may have doubts of his secularism, but even his enemies don’t doubt his competence,” writes Gunawant Shah, a popular Gujarati columnist.

Continue reading Cows, Women and Hindu Manhood →

Bad ideas, Media politics

Sangharsh Hamara Nara Hai

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Protest is a form of speech that a society employs to communicate with itself.

You do not protest in public, shout and scream, chant slogans and hold placards on an ordinary day. You do it but rarely. You do it when you are outraged.

And when you do protest, you want to be heard.

I have been interested lately in protest, though I must say there’s a lot more to say about Jantar Mantar.

I wonder why those who protest are no longer being heard, leading them, sometimes, to wonder if they are being pushed to the wall, a wall they’ll have to break down with a gun.

But I wonder, equally, if the protestors are listening only to themslves. Communication, after all, is not about one-way speaking. Communication is also about listening. Continue reading Sangharsh Hamara Nara Hai →

Debates, Left watch

Brinda Karat: The Paranoia of a Totalitarian Mind

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While West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya adopted a misleadingly deceptive tone, apparently taking all the blame for the unfortunate events that took place in Nandigram (at the 29 March SFI-DYFI rally in Kolkata), the party’s lie-machine continues to overtime on its disinformation campaign. Bhattacharya’s plea for an end to violence and killings, virtually beseeching the ‘Opposition’ to stop killing Leftist (read CPM supporters), is meant to have a specific effect – that of making it appear as though it is really they who are the aggrieved party. It is a belated strategic move, aimed at the more gullible and the wider world outside, to convey the impression that they are at the receiving end. Suddenly all the belligerence seems to have disappeared and this reasonable man appears with folded hands to beg for the return of ‘normalcy’. But this is misleading because, at another level of discourse, this new pose is accompanied by continuous, ever new production of lies and insinuations, by other members and wings/ arms of his party.

The full article was first posted in sacredmediacow.

Debates, Left watch

Sacrifice of Truth in Nandigram

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The ‘logic’ of the CPIM and the (West Bengal) State police under its control for launching an all-out attack on the villagers of Nandigram who had totally cut themselves off from the State to counter its anticipated move to dispossess and displace them is extremely clear. The State cannot tolerate the refusal of the people to be ruled by it. That is precisely why it makes use of its sovereign power to demonstrate and establish its supremacy or hegemony. In this particular regard, the State presumably governed by Leftist ideology has acted no different – not at all. The main reason for worry here is that the CPIM has completely forgotten that it is not a wing of the State the way the police or any other administrative department is. One may, however, retort that hardly anywhere in the world wherever the Communist party has come to power has bothered to keep a distance between itself and the State. Rather it looks upon the State as an instrument for its own expansion.

Continue reading Sacrifice of Truth in Nandigram →

Debates, Left watch, Politics

Comprador Intellectuals on the War-Path

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[comprador: 1. An intermediary; a go-between. 2. A native-born agent in China and certain other Asian countries formerly employed by a foreign business to serve as a collaborator or intermediary in commercial transactions. Source: American Heritage Dictionary. A word once popularized in the writings of Mao Tsetung, this meant simply a foreign agent. We could more profitably deploy it here to describe those who have abdicated their position as critical intellectuals to the demands of power. ]

A friend who teaches in Kolkata University was once accosted by a group of SFI [acronym of the CPM’s student-wing] activists asking for ‘donations’. You have of course to be familiar with the political culture of West Bengal – first under the Congress regime and then ably carried on under the CPM – in order to understand what ‘donation’ or ‘chaanda’ means. Ordinary mortals tremble when CPM supporters come to ask for chaanda, be it for the Durga Puja or for students’ elections. This brave man happened to tell them that he would not give donations to the SFI or CPM as he disagreed with their politics. As the students were leaving the room, one of them returned to tell him, “Sir, Amaar naam Ratna Sarkar. Kichhu dorkaar hole bolben.” [Sir, my name is Ratna Sarkar (name changed for obvious reasons). Please let me know if you need something]. The very mention of the name was supposed to reveal in a flash to this foolhardy teacher, who at 50 years plus, continues to remain a ‘senior lecturer’, that she was the daughter of one of the most powerful state CPM leaders. A daily occurrence in West Bengal. A silent terror inscribed in daily life.

This friend needs also to be mentioned here today because he has had a fairly compelling thesis for sometime now. Civil society in Bengal, he suggests, has been decimated ever since the CPM/LF came to power. In the pre-Left Front days, he argues, it was the Leftist intelligentsia that constituted the critical voice, interrogating the excesses of power. Not any more. What can such an intelligentsia be called but comprador, who have ‘sold their conscience’ to the party line – to resort to a mild polemical Leninism. But alas, such intellectuals are not merely the Sunil Gangopadhyays in Bengal who have fallen in line not because of party commitment but maybe some other calculations; after all they have to live in CPM ruled West Bengal for quite some more time to come. Such are also the seventeen intellectuals who have issued the statement in defense of the West Bengal government.

Continue reading Comprador Intellectuals on the War-Path →

Capitalism, Left watch, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Insider’s Account of What Happened in Nandigram

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A senior journalist based in Kolkata has given a chilling account of the “police blueprint” for action in Nandigram in an exclusive to sacredmediacow.

Debates, Government

SAARC: Need for a Paradigm Shift

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As the 14th SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) Summit draws nearer, and the host, the Indian Government, begins to step up its preparations, it seems a good time to raise certain issues and questions, designed to draw lessons for the next stage of regional institution building. Where are we? What issues, practices and policy changes can be proposed to improve the quality of regional policy making and implementation? What can civil society organisations and citizens do to contribute effectively to this process? How can SAARC be made more open and transparent to South Asian citizens? What are some of the best practices that have contributed to an effective intra-state coordination, consultation with non-state actors and public accountability? The vision of SAARC today should be that of a South Asia that is integrated, prosperous and peaceful; a South Asia driven by its own citizens; an anti-colonial, democratic and dynamic force in the global arena; and human and peoples’ rights the cornerstone of its political programmes.

Wars and killings in the name of nations; violence, often on a massive scale; boundaries and borders creating major elements of conflicts between the nation states; trans-border crime, narco-terrorism, illegal and informal transactions; illegal migration and large-scale refugee infiltration; trade and transit barriers and trade imbalances — we can find all this and much more in serious proportions in these times of SAARC. However, they are not the core of our assessment, as nobody had believed that these issues could be resolved in two decades or so. The core is that even though some significant spaces have been opened up for greater and more sustained regional cooperation and some beginning has been made, the overall mood is not optimistic, and the prospects of a people-driven SAARC remain largely unfulfilled. Lack of vision, initiative and will, inadequate institutional capacity, and inappropriate policies and procedures have totally negated any thought and practice that SAARC should build a partnership between governments and all segments of civil society, to strengthen solidarity and cohesion among our people in South Asia. There is hardly any civil society participation in its policy development processes, and it is taken as a closed, non-transparent, non-serious affair in the region.

Continue reading SAARC: Need for a Paradigm Shift →

Left watch

Cell-phone records reveal CPM-gangster nexus

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[A story by Imran Ahmed Siddiqui, in The Telegraph, reveals what was already being suspected – that the CPM leadership planned and executed the massacre by bringing in a combination of gangsters, party cadres and the police. The story also reveals that the possibility of many of these gangsters having operated on 14 March in the guise of police personnel may not have been far-fetched after all. -AN]

Stockpile squad trail heads towards party –
Phone records spill Nandigram secret
-IMRAN AHMED SIDDIQUI
Contai (East Midnapore), March 18: Ten men arrested with arms outside Nandigram have confessed they were on a CPM mission, and their cellphone records show the gang was in touch with key party leaders from East Midnapore while holed up in the brick kiln where the CBI found them yesterday.

The Telegraph got access to a copy of their statements recorded by Khejuri police and submitted in the Contai fast-track court of the judicial magistrate, which today remanded them in police custody till March 22.

Read the full story here.

Sports

Why I hate the Aussies

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When it comes to the sporting arena, Scotland is not well known to set the imagination of fans on fire.

However, I was strongly praying for them to acquire an unexpected life in their opening World Cup game and hoped that they manage to give the Australians a crash course in the funniness of the game called cricket.

In the last five years, I have had only one agenda when it comes to cricket. I want the Australians to be thrashed, beaten, bullied and plummeted. The ultimate cricketing sight for me is to see Glenn McGrath’s shoulders droop and his arms hanging low and his mouth clenched tightly and his eyes unable to meet the batsman’s eyes. I don’t really care who the batsman is, it could be Henry Olonga for all I care, or any team that produces this effect. Continue reading Why I hate the Aussies →

Countryside, Identities, Images, Media politics

Orientalism

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Continue reading Orientalism →

Capitalism, Left watch

Nandigram Update from Sanjay Sangvai

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[CPM cadres have made it virtually impossible for any independent report to come out of Nandigram. They have not allowed even the media and political leaders to enter the area while their propaganda machinery has begun working overtime, presenting a completely false picture of the situation and the events. Meanwhile, all we have regarding the actual loss of lives is a series of speculative assessments, some of which put the death toll at an astounding 125. Given that even some Left Front partners believe that the figure could be far more than what the government is prepared to concede, this may not be an entirely unbelievable figure. At any rate, the more greviously injured included, the toll seems really high. Some of the scenes on television yesterday showed how two women trying to remove a body were attacked by the police brutally and the body snatched from them. How can they allow the bodies to accumulate and be counted? We present below the latest update on the situation by NAPM activist Sanjay Sangvai. – AN]

AN APPEAL FROM NANDIGRAM AND KOLKATA/ March 15, 2007

POLICE & CADRES KILL 125 IN NANDIGRAM
MASSACRE

As the death count of March 14 carnage in Nandigram by the W.Bengal Police and CPM cadres has reached 125, the people, organizations and activists of Nandigram and Kolkata called upon all the people, who value the democracy, human rights and equality of freedom to come to Nandigram and be with the
struggling people.

Though the cadres of the ruling Communist Party (Marxist) are blocking the way, the High Court Order on March 15, asks the government to facilitate the people to visit the area for enquiry of help. “The people must show their resolve against the Fascist ways of the so called progressive government and
party” said Samar Das, a senior activist from National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM), W. Bengal.

Continue reading Nandigram Update from Sanjay Sangvai →

DISSENT, DEBATE, CREATE